It’s 10:30AM on June the 5th, 2021 and I’m meeting with artists—husband and wife—Tine Hecht-Pedersen and Pontus Kjerrman.

Tine and Pontus live in Kunstnerbyen, also known as “Artist’s town” in an area called Hjortekær, around 45-minutes north of Copenhagen by train. This particular neighborhood was originally built to house artists in the 1950s. “It’s important that people passing know artists still live here.” Tine is out the front welcoming me as soon as I reach their driveway, gesturing to work placed out the front of their home. Various sculptures, murals, and ornaments are on display, all of different scales and materials. I count 14 pieces but I have a feeling there may be more hidden within the grass. 

By the time we make it to their front door, I’ve registered at least another 10 works; mosaic tiles leading to the entrance of their home, a plaster relief, a custom letter box, to a sign that looks like it’s made of chipboard, right above Tine’s studio door that says “The smile you send out, returns to you.” This sets a mood that continues into their home.

“It’s not very Danish but we don’t like minimalism so much. We like to show our personalities in our home. We like to look around and see our past lives, and where we’ve traveled.” Tine is talking while moving from room to room, making some words louder or more muted than the next. We’re inside now and I feel like I’ve just fallen down a rabbit hole. If I was in fact dropped here and told to guess where I’d landed, I certainly wouldn’t guess Denmark.

Their home can only be described as full, almost bursting. Bursting with such a fullness and energy you can almost feel a heartbeat in every corner. Like a newborn cooing with the joys and wonders of all that’s unfolding, I’m finding it difficult to keep in the involuntary sounds humming and slipping out of my mouth. Immediately taken by the chartreuse colored entry way, four human sized fantastical creatures—three sitting, one standing—congregate under the stairs to welcome visitors. Paintings are hung at every available height on the walls, from the very base, to the 4-meter high crease of Pontus’s studio where wall meets ceiling. Old exhibition posters taped to doorways, newspaper clippings pinned to any free wall space. All paired with the morning radio and the smell of freshly baked bread made by Pontus, and a rhubarb pie made by Tine fresh out of the oven. I imagine loneliness wouldn’t stand a chance here.

As I walk in, Pontus is laying on the couch, legs straight out with his laptop on his thighs: “I just need to finish this email and I will be with you.” Right behind him are two more, human-scale sculptures of two beings, one with wings holding another without wings that seems to be fainting, or falling. They’re by Pontus, made originally for an exhibition in 2017, “Down with the Arms—The Landscape of Life” at Rudolph Tegners Museum.

Kunstnerbyen originally had 24 ateliers, all of which were built as part residence, part studio. Each with high ceilings, sky lights, solid wood floors, and with very generous backyards. All designed by the architect, Søren Leer Jacobsen. Today, most have been renovated or extended to some degree over the past 50 years as many artists have moved on. Reason why Tine wants to keep the history alive, with their permanent and evolving exhibition out the front.

We’re sitting outside now under a large tree in their backyard. Pontus starts pointing at a house just over the fence. “We had seen an advertisement for that house, but by the time we had called it was sold… Then that house,” Pontus swivels slightly on his seat, “was about to go on the market, and we heard this news from those people”—he’s back pointing at the original house they missed out on. “So we almost bought that house, but then this house, which was slightly bigger,” now pointing at his own home, “became available, and we bought it almost immediately. This was in 1995. It was ideal for a family of four.”

No matter where you are, inside or outside, you’ll either see or be touching their work. From the butter dish to the milk jug, to their bathroom sink, all made by Pontus. Lamps, coasters, the shower tiles, made by Tine. “You start with some things, and then get interrupted… and then whiiirrrr” Pontus trails off with the whirring sound of a stunt plane spiraling. He’s talking about his process. How he jumps from piece to piece, never making one thing at a time.

Up until 2019, Pontus was the Head of the Plaster Laboratory at the Royal Danish Academy. He’d been teaching there for 35-years. This is where Tine and Pontus first met: “He was my teacher, but I knew his work before I met him in person” Tine is laughing, but Pontus jumps in, “...There was only a four-year age gap!” he interjects with a smile.

“His work from the beginning was fantastic, it still is of course, but back then, seeing it for the first time, it was ‘Wow’ it had so much energy. I thought, ‘Where is he!?’”

This was Tine’s “first moment of attraction” she shares. Pontus is visibly enjoying this rendition of the story. Perched on a classic white Monobloc chair, he’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat, shorts, and a white button-up shirt. He’s curled himself up so tightly that he’s managed to hug his knees against his chest, the soles of his feet resting on the seat, toes dangling off the edge moving with thought. His nimble nature paired with his continuous smile, cheeky interjections, and light sense of humor makes you question the white atop his head. At the time of our first conversation he’s 67.

“It was not so good for me in the beginning,” Tine admits about their professional relationship. “Everybody knew him” she continues, “...and well, I wasn’t known… but we don’t think so much about that now...” she finishes, just as Pontus starts, “...Well you have been talking a little about how you didn’t have the chance to do so much as I did.” Tine comes back, “Yes, that is true.” 

Many times Tine has been invited to help Pontus with his work, which has given her a great sense of connection to him. “These times helping Pontus was good for me because then I felt like I was a part of it. I still help to this day when I can.”

Tine’s own work exudes the same warmth, honesty, and generosity as she does—Holding traces of morality and humanity, embodying her beliefs in teaching, togetherness, and the importance of community. Each piece breathes an air of spontaneity and porosity through the choice of color, shapes, and textures—forms that feel touched, organic, shaped by a process that could only emerge through the participation of human hands.

Maintaining a healthy dynamic between two artists can be a challenge, especially when both are so deeply immersed in their work: “Yes, that can be a big problem, but we are not jealous, I am not jealous,” Tine says. “Sometimes you are,” Pontus says with the same smile as before. There’s love in their teasing. Not even a sprinkle of spite. The trust and security between the two of them can be felt. “It’s just not possible for me to make Pontus’s sculptures, I cannot. I cannot physically do it. So I have to do something else.” 

“We are a team,” Tine says vehemently. “He calls me into his studio when he needs help on a piece, and I call him into my studio when I need help on a piece.” While Tine’s studio is on ground level, separate from the main house, Pontus’ studio is reached by walking into the front door and up a small set of stairs. Separate spaces, where you couldn’t yell from one room to the next, but close enough for quick collaborations.

“He really enjoys being in his studio alone,” Tine says, “I like to be home in my atelier, sometimes, alone, but not for too long” Pontus responds “When it gets darker, and you’re not here…”—“You like when I come home” Tine jumps in. “Yes, it’s not too nice when it gets close to evening, and you’re not here.”

“My life has always been another way,” Tine begins talking about her working process. “I like to talk with people because I need it. Otherwise it would be too lonely to be here by myself. That’s why my studio was built close to the road, so I can speak with people as they walk by, sit outside and drink coffee.” Tine’s studio was an extension of the original house plan. With entrance doors around 2.5 meters high, skylights covering nearly the entire ceiling, generous shelves and counter space, and housing a large kiln where both of them can fire their pieces. It’s become the ideal production space where large scale sculptures can be wheeled in and out and then easily onto a truck when delivering to museums and galleries.

Tine gives Pontus an incredible amount of room—Room to speak, room to express, room to lead. At times, there’s a subtle trace of an earlier dynamic, a kind of deference that may stem from their beginnings as teacher and student. Tine doesn’t hold back her strong and assertive opinions—which Pontus admires and encourages—but there is a clear sense of allowing Pontus to be Pontus, and there’s a beauty in this fortifying dynamic. Neither of them are trying to change the other—and I sense they’ve never tried.

Pontus is undeniably charming, exuding a sense of lightness and freedom that only a person who’s truly found their lot in life can exhibit. Unburdened, well-humoured, effortlessly charismatic, and not one to sugarcoat or decorate his sentences. When Pontus is speaking you don’t want him to stop. He doesn’t preach and pontificate but his stories have a sermon-like quality to them, trains of thought you don’t want to see the end of. Whether Tine has heard these anecdotes for the first time or the hundredth time in their marriage, you couldn’t tell. She always listens to him and laughs with him like it’s the first time. There’s a reason the old saying goes, “Behind every great man is a great woman”—though in this case, it’s less behind, and more beside, quietly anchoring the entire room. 

I ask Tine about her experience as an artist, while also managing the duties of becoming a mother.

“Motherhood changed me a lot, shifted my priorities away from my art more than I thought it would.”

Tine wanted to be very involved in her children’s life and their schooling. This was very important to her, to fit in these experiences alongside her artwork. Pontus did too: “I wanted to have a family, an ordinary life, and art, altogether. Often the artists that really reach a certain level of success have spent a lot of time alone, pouring all their time and energy into their art, some even making a conscious choice to not have children. I didn’t want this. I really wanted to find a way to combine it all, and because of Tine, we have succeeded, I think.” In addition to her domestic and artist life, since 2000, Tine has taught regularly at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, the children's art museum, and the casting collection.

Tine’s willingness to include— to teach, and be taught— is really what motivates her and her work. She likes to speak with people constantly and find collaborators to bring her pieces to life. “When Tine and I first met, she was making very complicated sculptures, like the one with the wings,” Pontus explains, “Chair Morning Red” 1988. It’s made using wood, plaster, concrete, and iron, and was originally intended to be an interactive piece, one you could sit on. One of the first pieces Pontus assisted Tine with was a 2.3 meter high bust, cast in white marble concrete, with eyes in Egyptian faience. It was made for an outdoor sculpture show in Hvidovre, that Pontus had curated. “I have my ideas, but Pontus has the brain that helps instruct how to put my work together,” Tine says. “It’s so important to have something you can create together, especially when the children leave home.”

“I’m lucky I wasn’t well known when I was younger—I wouldn’t have had as much time for my children,” Tine says. Now that their two children - Emil and Asta - are older, they speak often of a new sense of freedom, one that hasn’t been dulled by age. “We have time now,” Tine starts. “There’s less pressure on us,” Pontus adds. “And we both feel strong,” Tine continues. “Now you can relax and not have to think about the children,” says Pontus. “I really think my possibilities are right now,” Tine says. My head moves between them like I’m watching a tennis match. They’re so in sync—not quite finishing each other’s sentences, but drafting a shared script for how they want to live.

Nearly three years later on February the 9th, 2024, I visited Tine and Pontus for the second time. It was winter, so we spent more time indoors, with Pontus showing me each room, each painting. “This was the time I had heart surgery, in 2018,” he says, pointing to a painting Emil made afterward. Emil, also an artist, captured the moment Pontus woke up from surgery. “One of my heart valves wasn’t working because an infection had damaged the strings that hold it in place,” Pontus explains, repeating what the doctor told him. “The nurses suggested I try to walk, and I felt like a robot. I said to Emil, ‘Tay-kah pho-to of meee,’” Pontus imitates himself, struggling to speak with cords in his nose and mouth, stitches in his chest. “Emil finally understood and took the photo. A few days later, he gave me this painting.” He looks at the painting and adds, “It seems a bit morbid now, but I think it’s important to document moments like this—especially those that create fear. Art can help us understand and process life’s essential incidents.”

Emil has been helping over the years with archiving, keeping track of press for both parents and filing them away in various boxes with press clippings and associated dates. “It’s also nice because maybe in the future, he needs to tidy up after us, so maybe it was good for him,” Pontus says while looking around the room.

When it comes to their relationship with time, Pontus claims, “Normally, we don’t think about it,” as he looks to Tine for confirmation. “Last week, I had this lump on my head, and it was getting bigger and bigger. I don’t know why, but I really thought, maybe this is a tumor or something—so I wondered, could this be the end?” This made him reconsider the new atelier he had always wanted to build by their summerhouse in Stråvalla Strand, Sweden, something he hadn’t gotten around to. “Maybe I don’t have time,” he says, waving his hands in front of his face. When he got to the doctor, it turned out to be an inflamed insect bite. “‘No, no, you won’t die from that,’ the doctor said.” Pontus shakes his head with a softer smile than usual. “So, then I started feeling a little foolish... but it did get me thinking about time more seriously.”

“All we want to do now with our time is make sculptures, and it’s fantastic we can both do that. We have more time because Pontus is now not working at the academy and I have fewer days teaching at the Statens Museum. Again, we are free.” 

In their sprawling, sculpture laden garden, while we ate and talked, we sometimes sat in silence, listening to each other chewing until the next thought came, or when their dog Tara the Border Collie returned with a wet tennis ball in her mouth. The Scandinavian silence takes some time to get used to, but once you settle in, you start to realise the alternative; Why so many cultures feel the need to stuff each pause with more words. I’m certainly guilty of this. That said, the birds surrounding us, whatever they were, certainly didn’t subscribe to this social code.

Pontus returns to the topic of time. “Galleries would never start representing someone of my age now… well, it’s possible, but not so likely.” He begins speaking about the German artist Ursula Reuter Christiansen (b. 1943), who, at the time of our conversation, is 81 years old. “She’s a wonderful, interesting person, and of course she was known before, but now she’s really had a renaissance. There are a lot of good artists, and any of them could reach the top, but it’s a game, maybe—and I’ve tried to avoid that.” He pauses, squinting at the sun filtering through the trees, as if wanting to say something else.

“The grass is always going to seem greener, and if you keep walking up to that fence and looking at the other side, you’ll never enjoy what you’re doing.” 

While buttering a new piece of bread, Pontus speaks of artist friends who have shown at world-renowned museums—in one story, the Guggenheim—and how lonely and unsatisfied some of them felt after their openings. “You try to get up to that level and ohhh ohhh”—he’s pantomiming, losing his balance and falling while seated, legs still curled up to his chest—“...and you think, maybe this level is good. You have to enjoy your life.” To which Tine then adds, “You have to find other ways to make your art and tell your stories. I don’t necessarily aspire to showing work in a closed gallery anymore. That’s why we like going to China so much—we’ve built a good community there and have been working on public art that people can interact with.”

I no longer see a separation from Pontus and his work. He embodies his sculptures and his sculptures embody him. Perfectly described as “sympathetic hybrid creatures,” by art critic and curator Mikkel Bogh, “that revolve around the fable, crossing, unencumbered, over the border that originally separates human beings from animals.” Sometimes you’ll see a horse, a bear, a mouse, maybe even a dog, but you’ll never be convinced of the species of Pontus’s work. Both domesticated and fantastical. What they are exactly cannot be defined, yet their unplaceable foreignness remains to be familiar, safe, welcoming. You’re in good company if in the presence of Pontus’s work.

Pontus’s work is a lesson into the inevitable and unstoppable nature of all living creatures; transitions and evolutions. A mirror onto a society that is constantly trying to gender, domesticate, identify, and classify. Pontus discards those ideas, with such a sensitivity and playfulness, it leaves the viewer to simply trust and accept. 

Meeting Tine and Pontus was a masterclass in growing old—a stage most people fear or resist. They show that aging isn’t about slowing down or stepping back, but about leaning further into life—more generously, more freely. In the first email response from Tine she wrote, “...Pontus and I are very busy. We will of course gladly participate in your project, but can only spend the necessary time.” It took a long time to meet them, their schedules are full, and they’re not looking to make it otherwise.

For them, aging seems to look like exactly what it is: another day, another day, another day. Yet, their environment seems to hide the mundanity of it all. They reflect on how things change, but their momentum and spirit is never lost.

Despite waking with a softer, sorer body each morning, to rise and return to their studios, knowing exactly who they are and what they want is the freedom of a life well spent. 

While free of self-praise, it’s clear they are at peace with who they are—and with each other. There’s always a noticeable difference when spending time in the presence of people with a strong sense of self-respect.

In their world, time is not something to fear, but something to fill—with work, with love, with art. It reminds me of the small sign above Tine’s studio door: “The smile you send out, returns to you.” A quiet motto for a life that embraces the unknown, and trusts that what you offer the world will somehow find its way back.

The best thing, three years after our first conversation, they’ve nearly finished building their atelier in their Swedish summer house. Marcus Aurelius would certainly agree that the fear of death can be incredibly inspiring and motivating—something we should think about, not as an end, but as a beginning of the unknown, which as far as any of us are aware, could be an entirely new path of possibilities. 

At the end of our second meeting, I tell them how I find it difficult to leave their place. “You can stay whenever you want. We will continue working and you can be here working. Then we eat together when we’re hungry,” Tine says, while pouring me more coffee, as if it’s just a natural part of how things are. “Pontus makes great Chinese food,” she adds.

The home of Tine Hecht-Pedersen and Pontus Kjerrman feels like a parallel universe where only good things happen—where the mundane is polished anew, existentialism extinguished, and art the only requirement for survival. 

My final learnings from their life—building a home takes time. Not just the brick by brick nature of a facade, but the life lived within it: the relationships, the memories, and the objects that surround you. Each item, each room, is a reminder of who we are and where we’ve been. At the end of the day, we all return home, to remember who we are.